Re: KiCad or ??

Hi Andrew

I don't want to debate this but he was working for the company and at least where I work you sign a letter the first day of employment that the company owns all IP you develop (even on your free time) especially if it is in an area you are working (he was working of routing software for his former boss). So I think he does not have much to stand on - unless it is different in other countries - but you can see it would not be in a companies favor for you to work on a project that they are paying you for and you develop a competitive version - I doubt the courts would favor you either - that is why I raised the question. The other thing I worry about is there something in the files that identify the origin of the routing? Eagle used to do this (maybe they still do) so they could discern if you were using a free copy to make commercial boards - so for John's comment it would not make a difference if you machine was off net - if there is a finger print somewhere in the gerber files. Call me a little paranoid - not sure of the legality of using the code.

Dave

On Monday, July 14, 2014 1:49:05 PM UTC-5, Andrew Bingham wrote:

The code for the "routing tool we all liked to use" is up on github as well.

I don't know that we want to get into this here in detail but - the person who is making the claim of copyright issues had a less-capable routing tool written by the person who wrote "the routing tool we all liked to use", many years ago, *in another programming language* (not Java).

As the two software packages are in different languages, written many years apart, with different features, I don't see how they can have a legitimate copyright claim.

Andrew B

On Monday, July 14, 2014 11:14:19 AM UTC-7, yoda wrote:
Has it been decided what we are going to do about the lack of routing software because of the issue with freerouting.net? I can go either way (I have squirreled away the java code - though it might make people nervous with the legal implications) - DipTrace does not look too bad if we can use the non profit version of the software.

I ask because I am going to start doing some prototyping and don't want to have to enter the schematics twice

Thanks

Dave